FERGUSON'S FAULT LINES: The Race Quake that Rocked a Nation

In almost every highly publicized case of police using deadly force and killing unarmed individuals, the person killed was an African American male. These incidents have caused dramatic erosion in public confidence in the justice system and America’s promise of equal treatment under the law. Minority communities need assurance that our justice system is fair and balanced and is for the protection of everyone. Solutions must be developed to sustain confidence in our judicial.

Ferguson's Fault Lines will also examine other important topics of debate such as:

• The framing of the issues by the media in black versus white
• The policing of black and poor communities by law enforcement officers
• Poverty
• Looting
• Rioting
• The color and face of crime as portrayed in the media
• The identity of the black male narrative
• The relevance of black life and whether and how it matters

Kimberly Jade Norwood is the Henry H. Oberschelp Professor of Law at Washington University. She completed her undergraduate work at Fordham University and graduated from law school at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She clerked for a federal district court judge after graduation and practiced law with a private firm before joining Washington University School of Law in 1990. At Washington University, she has taught a range of courses including Implicit Biases in Society, K-12 Education Law and Policy, Torts, and Products Liability.  One of her classes, entitled Race, Class & Education, involves a combination of judges, lawyers, law students, and high school students working together under a high school to law school pipeline program model; the program has won both local and national awards. She has also taught in China, Japan, Taiwan, the Netherlands, and she has supervised public interest externships in Ghana and Kenya.  She teaches workshops around the country on implicit bias and was one of the national experts hired by Starbucks to advise it on its racial bias training of its employees. Her research interests involve Black identity issues, colorism, the public education challenges facing poor children, inner city children and Black and Latino/a children, and bias issues.  Her first book: Color Matters:  Skin Tone Bias & the Myth of a Post-Racial America, was published in 2014 and the next year she organized the first International Colorism conference on U.S. soil, hosted at Washington University School of Law.  Her second book, Ferguson’s Fault Lines:  The Race Quake that Rocked a Nation was published by the ABA in 2016.

A 2015-2016 Distinguished Faculty Award Recipient at Washington University, she was awarded a Chair in the Washington University Law School in 2016.  She served as a Commissioner on the ABA Diversity and Inclusion 360 Commission and co-chaired the Commission’s Implicit Bias committee.  She is currently a Commissioner on the ABA Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession.  She was also appointed by the Chief Judge of the Missouri Supreme Court to serve on a Municipal Court Work Group which studied the Municipal Court System in the state of Missouri.  She is currently a Commissioner on the Missouri Supreme Court  Racial and Ethnic Fairness Commission.  She also serves as a member of team monitoring the consent decree in the U.S. v. City of Ferguson case.